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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Oh my stars! Don't you ever just have fun?? Must
you give a essay for everything? </FONT></DIV>
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style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=ngier@uidaho.edu href="mailto:ngier@uidaho.edu">Nick Gier</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, September 24, 2005 10:33
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] Pat Kraut, the
Manichee</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Dear Visionaries:<BR><BR>Manicheanism: God and Satan are two
cosmic powers fighting for the control of the world. Condemned by both
Protestant and Catholic authorities. "The Devil made me do it" simply
doesn't wash.<BR><BR>Orthodox Christianity: God is sovereign over his creation
and everything happens with his permission or active participation. For
example, God permits and empowers Satan to destroy Job's family and herds. At
chap. 42: 11 God is identified as the one "who brought evil" upon
Job.<BR><BR>Apparently Pat Kraut did not read my recent essay and Martin
Luther's quote: “Since God moves and does all, we must take it that he moves
and acts even in Satan and the godless; . . . evil things are done with God
himself setting them in motion.” <BR><BR>In the essay I posted (appended
below) I neglected to mention that if one revises the orthodox view of divine
power, one can avoid these implications.<BR><BR>By the way, Phil Nisbeth still
has to point out to us where I have dumbed down any of my published
arguments.<BR><BR><B>THE GOOD LORD JUST DONE GAVE US A WHUPPIN’!<BR>KATRINA AS
THE WRATH OF
GOD?<BR><BR></B>
Protestors outside the national headquarters of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,
and Transgendered Alliance held signs such as “Thank God for Katrina” and “New
Orleans: City of Sinners and
Sodomites.”<BR><BR> A
Mississippian interviewed on NPR just after Katrina hit exclaimed that “The
Good Lord just done gave us a whuppin’,” but the Governor of Texas declared
that “By the grace of God we were saved.” What, for God’s sake, is going
on here?<BR><BR> Why do
bad things happen to good people? Why do the wicked get away with murder and
the innocent die in disasters such as Katrina and September 11? Following
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the protestors above claim to have a pat
answer: all of us are being punished for the sins of a few. Most of us,
however, are repulsed by such an outrageous and poisonous
diagnosis.<BR><BR> My
first philosophy of religion textbook contained a footnote that showed a long
term study of tornado damage in the Bible Belt. Far more churches were
hit than bars and houses of prostitution. If these are “acts of God,”
what on earth is God trying to tell
us?<BR><BR> The problem
of evil has bedeviled philosophers and theologians for at least three
millennia. It is most cited reason by those who do not believe in
God. But even most believers are not willing to admit that God judges us
with such horrendous violence. This makes God a moral monster.
<BR><BR> In Agatha
Christie’s <I>Then There Were None</I>, one of the characters opines that
those who had been murdered were “struck down of the wrath of God.”
Justice Wargrave was not convinced: “Providence leaves the work of conviction
and chastisement to us mortals.” Ironically, it was Wargrave who planned
all the murders!<BR><BR>
Let us see if we can actually reconcile belief in God with the existence of
unmitigated evils. The first thing to note is that Justice Wargrave is a good
Confucian or Stoic in holding a doctrine of General Providence. In this
view God presides over a world that operates by natural laws and in which
humans govern their own affairs. Most people don’t realize that this is
the view that Darwin held in the first edition of the <I>Origin of
Species</I>.<BR><BR> On
the other hand, the Abrahamic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--
believe in Special Providence. This means that God chooses particular
prophets or saviors that embody divine authority, and then God intervenes in
history as an expression of divine will and
judgment.<BR><BR>
Philosophers make a distinction between moral evils and natural evils.
The first is the result of humans choosing to do good or evil. For
orthodox Christians the prototypical moral evil was Adam and Eve’s choice to
disobey God in the Garden of Eden. All the other evil in the world
started with this fatal
decision.<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Natural
or physical evil is defined as that which is not the result of any human will:
disease (both physical and mental) and natural disasters. In a theology
in which God is all powerful, it can only be God who wills these conditions
and events to
happen.<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Even
though some Christian legislators in Oklahoma tried to change the language of
their insurance law, calling natural disasters “acts of God” is correct
Christian theology. The Oklahoma law makers, however, recognized the
logical implication of such a view: it made God responsible for what all of us
would call evil
acts.<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>I
suspect that the Oklahoma legislators really wanted to say that Satan causes
all the evil in the world. But this is the heresy of Manicheanism, a
view that compromises God’s power by holding that there is another cosmic
power that is the source of evil.
<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Following
the Book of Job, where it is clear that Satan operates only with the
permission and delegated power of God, Christian theologians have consistently
declared that even Satan is empowered by God. Martin Luther expressed the
point most clearly: “Since God moves and does all, we must take it that he
moves and acts even in Satan and the godless; . . . evil things are done with
God himself setting them in motion.” Following some key Old Testament
passages, Luther believed that Satan was the dark side of God, the wrath of
God.<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>How
do Christian theologians justify God doing evil? Here is the rationale:
God cannot abide the moral evils committed by humans, so God must show that
justice must prevail. Causing natural disasters are simply dramatic
previews of the Last Judgment, when divine justice will finally be done.
If God is performing justice, then God is doing good not evil. We would
call a judge who let all criminals off the hook a bad judge, wouldn’t
we?<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Let’s
take a closer look at this solution to the problem of evil. There is
something important that has been forgotten. When the theologian
Augustine discussed the Fall of Adam and Eve, he made a very interesting
concession: “our first parents fell into disobedience because they were
already secretly corrupted.” Adam and Eve were already corrupted because they
had “deficient wills.” But who was responsible for their deficient
wills? They could be only if they had created themselves. The only
answer is that God created them finite, fragile, and corruptible.
<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>An
engineer friend of mine was once hired by an auto insurance company to analyze
the steel in a broken drive shaft. He discovered that it was some of the
cheapest steel that Chrysler could have bought for this crucial part of the
chassis. Now it would have been absurd for Chrysler's attorneys to state
that the company was responsible for the positive elements of the steel but
not its deficiencies.
<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>At the
same time it would be unfair to demand that the steel manufacturer make sure
that there were no deficiencies at all. This we could demand solely of
an omnipotent Creator. As the exclusive manufacturer of all natural
things, the orthodox God is fully responsible for the deficiencies in his
products.
<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>I
submit that General Providence is a much more coherent view if people are
going to continue their belief in God. (Or Christians could revise the
concept of divine power as explained below.) The Confucians and Stoics also
believed that God is not a Creator. Rather, God is coeternal with a
universe that operates according to natural laws and contains rational beings
that freely choose their own
destinies.<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Following
Justice Wargrave, we are solely responsible for our own “convictions and
chastisements.” Instead of blaming God, we can focus on a president who
refuses to admit to global warming, who appoints unqualified people to
important offices, and who gives tax cuts to people who don’t need
them.<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Blame
must also be laid at the feet of a Congress that has for years refused to fund
necessary infrastructure repairs and maintenance. Finally, Louisiana and
New Orleans government officials are responsible for not being prepared for
the big storm they knew was coming. And God had nothing to do with
it.<BR><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Nick
Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31
years. For more on these issues see <A
href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/305/home.htm"
eudora="autourl">www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/305/home.htm</A>.<BR><BR><X-SIGSEP>
<P></X-SIGSEP><FONT size=2>"The god you worship is the god you deserve."<BR>~~
Joseph Campbell<BR></FONT>
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